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National Portrait Gallery Insights: The Bloomsbury Group
This book explores the impact of Bloomsbury personalities on each other, as well as their legacy to the 21st century. Frances Spalding presents over twenty fascinating biographies, all of which are illustrated with paintings and intimate photographs created by members of the Group.
108 pages, Hardcover
First published July 27, 2006
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About the author
Frances Spalding
70 books16 followersFrances Spalding CBE, FRSL (née Crabtree) is a British art historian, writer and a former editor of The Burlington Magazine.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
September 6, 2015
Virginia Woolf by Vanessa Bell, 1912 (wikiArt.org)
" Bloomsbury never tried of analysing their own and other people's behaviour. This testing habit of mind made them very alert, critical of themselves and others. It helped develop a blend of sensibility and intelligence that is particular to these friends – the warming of intelligence by sensibility and the testing of feeling by means of intelligence. In 1925, on a rare occasion when Virgina Woolf did comment on the group as a whole, she praised her Bloomsbury friends for 'having worked out a view of life which was not by any means corrupt or sinister or merely intellectual; rather ascetic and austere indeed; which still holds, and keeps them dining together, and staying together, after twenty years; and no amount of quarrelling or success, or failure has altered this. Now I think', she concludes, 'this rather creditable.' " (The Bloomsbury Group by Frances Spalding, p. 24)
January 14, 2019
A wonderful series of very short, ‘flash’ biographies (with photos and portraits) of many of the principal figures in Bloomsbury, by a well regarded biographer of Vanessa Bell (among others). It is also a beautifully produced little book.
There is one howler on the last page (113): “Though Russell made his name with The Principles of Mathematics (1903)..., he also did important work in the field of logic.”
There is one howler on the last page (113): “Though Russell made his name with The Principles of Mathematics (1903)..., he also did important work in the field of logic.”
March 28, 2012
A brief overview of Bloomsbury with brief biographies of the main figures and some minor ones. It is published by the National Portrait Gallery and the artwork within are in the Gallery. The artwork and photographs are stunning. For someone new to Bloomsbury and wanting a straightforward starting point this is a good introduction. There are ideas for further reading, the basic ideas set out with clarity and even a few of the in jokes; Bloomsbury consists of a group of men and women in love with Duncan Grant.
July 26, 2024
The Secret History group but less insufferable, I wish I was one of the Bloomsburies!!!!
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July 10, 2023i would do extreme and insane things to be a part of the bloomsbury group
February 10, 2021
This is only a little companion book to an exhibit that was showing at the National Portrait Gallery over 20 years ago now, but it was a handy little reference for the less prominent members and contributors the Bloomsbury Group while I'm also reading Vanessa's Memoir Club writings in Sketches In Pen And Ink: A Bloomsbury Notebook.
I felt there were one or two omissions in profiles here and there, it didn't really explain how some figures came to be connected to the Group (Lady Ottoline Morrell) or it discussed figures who are explicitly not included but neither was there an explanation as to why they were profiled in the book other than their being related to a member (e.g. Margery Fry and the Strachey sisters). Maybe you had to be there to know why, just another reason to time travel back to 1997 when the exhibit was running.
However for a slim book you get a very decent coverage of each figure (including key portraits and photos from the exhibition), the high-ballers such as the Woolfs, Bells, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry, but also the less synonymous players such as Dora Carrington. I also found some food for thought that I'm not sure what to do with (namely that David Garnett, after being part of a ménage à trois with her parents, went on to marry Angelica Bell, having entertained this idea around the time he watched Vanessa weigh the baby on kitchen scales...).
I felt there were one or two omissions in profiles here and there, it didn't really explain how some figures came to be connected to the Group (Lady Ottoline Morrell) or it discussed figures who are explicitly not included but neither was there an explanation as to why they were profiled in the book other than their being related to a member (e.g. Margery Fry and the Strachey sisters). Maybe you had to be there to know why, just another reason to time travel back to 1997 when the exhibit was running.
However for a slim book you get a very decent coverage of each figure (including key portraits and photos from the exhibition), the high-ballers such as the Woolfs, Bells, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry, but also the less synonymous players such as Dora Carrington. I also found some food for thought that I'm not sure what to do with (namely that David Garnett, after being part of a ménage à trois with her parents, went on to marry Angelica Bell, having entertained this idea around the time he watched Vanessa weigh the baby on kitchen scales...).
January 7, 2021
This lively monograph accompanied the marvelous show at London's National Portrait Gallery. Seeing their portraits and reading their descriptions of each other provides a glimpse of the circle's verve and brilliance. Virginia Woolf describes her sister as "a bowl of golden water which brims but never overflows." E.M. Forster is a "blue butterfly." Spalding's prose rises to the challenge. To painter Duncan Grant (with whom all the Bloomies were apparently in love), she gives the compliment, "In old age, ... he continued to make young friends." Even the obscurer members of the circle are limned memorably, as with the description of Philippa Strachey, whose "most memorable achievement was perhaps her ability to recite nursery rhymes with such exaggerated or unexpected emphasis that the most innocent tale became blood-curdling or full of sexual innuendo."
June 14, 2025
Great introduction to the group - with portraits and mini-biographies
September 1, 2022
My dear Goodreads friend, Sylvia, introduced me to “Bloomsbury”. This book has short biographies introducing the reader to key members of this British group. These were very like-minded thinkers, who thrived on books, art, philosophy, and to me , leisure. This was just what I needed.
August 20, 2016
Written by the “leading authority” Frances Spalding, this fascinating and very readable book which manages to cover in only a hundred pages an astonishing amount of information without seeming overloaded, begins with a brief explanation of the famous Bloomsbury Group before embarking on thumbnail biographies of many of its key members, each accompanying a full-page illustration of a painting from the National Portrait Gallery in London.
I have been forced to modify my view of the Bloomsbury Group (so-named after the district into which Vanessa Bell, as she was to become moved, together with her siblings including Virginia who was to marry the publisher Leonard Woolf. Having regarded them as a group of self-absorbed intellectuals, somewhat self-indulgent in the justification of their casual switching of partners, I now realise that their earnest discussion and experimentation was an important and inevitable response to the stultifying grip of Victorian moral conventions and unquestioning acceptance of religious teaching which linked ethics with behaviour. “Fresh questions had to be asked as to how and why they should be connected. What was the nature of good? How should you live? What philosophy could be found to support and justify the good life?” The Bloomsbury Group believed in honest personal relationships, and the value of enduring friendship, which could transcend a love affair which had lost its meaning. Virginia Woolf praised her Bloomsbury friends for “having worked out a view of life which still holds…after twenty years; and no amount of quarrelling or success, or failure has altered this”.
It is revealing how many of the photographs and paintings show the characters reading: the oddly charismatic, sedentary “man of letters” Lytton Strachey, was “often shown in a state of complete relaxation, a condition conducive to a life of intense mental activity”. This inspired the hopeless love of the probably somewhat neurotic artist Dora Carrington, whose portraits impressed me with their quality and realism: namely that of the handsome expert on Spain, Gerard Brenan, who in turn carried a torch in vain for her, and of E.M. Forster who shared Bloomsbury values while remaining on the margins of the group. The clarity and lifelike quality of Roger Fry’s self-portrait together with those of Bertrand Russell (whose mathematical mind and contempt for homosexuality may have distanced him from the Bloomsbury network, which he could not avoid because his wife Alys’s nieces married into it) and of Clive Bell, the longsuffering husband of Vanessa are at odds with Fry’s pioneering work “crusading passionately on behalf of Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Matisse,” to raise awareness in Britain of the Impressionist movement.
The author’s many insights into the lives and time of the Bloomsbury Group, are lightened by many anecdotes, such as the magnetic “cornflower-blue”-eyed David Garnett watching the weighing of Angelica, newborn daughter of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant with whom he lived in a menage à trois, and “conceiving the idea of marrying her” which he duly did more than twenty years later.
I have been forced to modify my view of the Bloomsbury Group (so-named after the district into which Vanessa Bell, as she was to become moved, together with her siblings including Virginia who was to marry the publisher Leonard Woolf. Having regarded them as a group of self-absorbed intellectuals, somewhat self-indulgent in the justification of their casual switching of partners, I now realise that their earnest discussion and experimentation was an important and inevitable response to the stultifying grip of Victorian moral conventions and unquestioning acceptance of religious teaching which linked ethics with behaviour. “Fresh questions had to be asked as to how and why they should be connected. What was the nature of good? How should you live? What philosophy could be found to support and justify the good life?” The Bloomsbury Group believed in honest personal relationships, and the value of enduring friendship, which could transcend a love affair which had lost its meaning. Virginia Woolf praised her Bloomsbury friends for “having worked out a view of life which still holds…after twenty years; and no amount of quarrelling or success, or failure has altered this”.
It is revealing how many of the photographs and paintings show the characters reading: the oddly charismatic, sedentary “man of letters” Lytton Strachey, was “often shown in a state of complete relaxation, a condition conducive to a life of intense mental activity”. This inspired the hopeless love of the probably somewhat neurotic artist Dora Carrington, whose portraits impressed me with their quality and realism: namely that of the handsome expert on Spain, Gerard Brenan, who in turn carried a torch in vain for her, and of E.M. Forster who shared Bloomsbury values while remaining on the margins of the group. The clarity and lifelike quality of Roger Fry’s self-portrait together with those of Bertrand Russell (whose mathematical mind and contempt for homosexuality may have distanced him from the Bloomsbury network, which he could not avoid because his wife Alys’s nieces married into it) and of Clive Bell, the longsuffering husband of Vanessa are at odds with Fry’s pioneering work “crusading passionately on behalf of Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Matisse,” to raise awareness in Britain of the Impressionist movement.
The author’s many insights into the lives and time of the Bloomsbury Group, are lightened by many anecdotes, such as the magnetic “cornflower-blue”-eyed David Garnett watching the weighing of Angelica, newborn daughter of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant with whom he lived in a menage à trois, and “conceiving the idea of marrying her” which he duly did more than twenty years later.
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August 2, 2019“It has been objected that the available literature on Bloomsbury has been too much occupied with biography, too much concerned with the lives of its members and not enough focused on their work. There is some validity in this complaint, but without the aid of biography we cannot grasp the history of thus group, for interpersonal relationships form an important structuring ingredient.” (p11)
This is a publication of the National Portrait Gallery, and a very charming little book it is. For each of the following members* of the Bloomsbury group a portrait is presented together with a short biographical sketch. Biographical details are not of when they were born and who their parents were, etc., but rather snippets of their views, aspects of their work, and their relationships with one another. There are also comments about the portraits. Some photographs have been included. All in all a nice little appetiser which makes me want more.
*Members for whom biographical sketches are provided:
Desmond MacCarthy
Virginia Woolf
Leonard Woolf
Vanessa Bell
Clive Bell
Duncan Grant
Roger Fry
Lytton Strachey
Dora Carrington
Lady Ottoline Morrell
John Maynard Keynes
E.M. Forster
Frances Partridge
Gerald Brenan
Davd Garnett
Philippa Stracchey and Marjorie Stracchey
Margery Fry
Bertrand Russell
January 6, 2017
I love these 'Insights' volumes from the National Portrait Gallery in London. Short but ... yes, insightful, with a loving focus (naturally) on art and portraiture, and beautifully presented, they both satisfy and intrigue.
June 25, 2020
Short biographies of the Bloomsbury group, with some context, illustrated by pictures which are all in the National Portrait Gallery. This is a lovely introduction and would be a good starting-point for anyone not familiar with the people and their sometimes complicated relationships.
August 4, 2020
A delicious insight into the personalities that made up the famous Bloomsbury Group, of which we would be hard-pressed to name a handful. Here, there are twenty, 12 of whom formed the core of the band of artists, writers, philosophers and diverse intellectuals who belong to a time when Modernism developed out of the New Hedonism of the dying embers of the Victorian period, and new ideas of subjectivity and sensibility in art and writing were borne on the wave of Freudian darkness and the new scientific enlightenment spearheaded by Einstein.
Since few academics can agree which period Modernism covers (1890-1939, or 1900-39, or as late as 1910 onwards), so too with when the Bloomsbury Group throve. Frances Spalding, with her own biographies of Roger Fry, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, and so a bit of an expert on the Bloomsbury Group, puts the date at 1904, when Vanessa and her brothers and sister relocated to Gordon Square in Bloomsbury. But its origins also lie in the Cambridge Apostles of 1899, when the Stephen sisters' brother Thoby and his coterie of Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell and Leonard Woolf met up, and to which Fry, MacCarthy, Forster and Keynes were also subsequently invited. It all gets a bit confusing, but that's not least because they were nearly all interrelated either through family or marriage. It needs a proper family tree.
However, the group is most relevant to me as a lover of Virginia Woolf. To The Lighthouse (1927) is my favourite novel and her diaries are a sensational read. The woman was unique, and drew me in with her siren poetic voice onto the dunes of her imagination, and appalled me in her diaries with her snobbishness while beguiling me with her perceptions. There are examples of both voices in this biopic series of the personalities belonging to the group, and I read in her diaries of her affection for Roger Fry, Maynard Keynes and E.M. Forster, as well as her mixed feelings for Ottoline Morrell.
This overview can be read in an afternoon and is even more enjoyable for having that capability. It is steered by a knowledge of the artistic movements of the time and the lively relations that existed between its core and fringe members, each and every one a fascinating insight into a collection of very formidable minds. It reveals tragedy and hope, fortitude and despair, in love and in intellectual pursuit. But what it reveals most is that these people really lived - in successive marriages, affairs, ménage à trois, hetero- and homosexuals alike - and they used their minds and talents to the fullest as well. It's a fascinating group, as fascinating as the Romantics or the Pre-Raphaelites, both also in this series, the former I enjoyed, the latter I hope to.
An excellent round-up of lives which have enriched our own, mine in particular. Thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.
Since few academics can agree which period Modernism covers (1890-1939, or 1900-39, or as late as 1910 onwards), so too with when the Bloomsbury Group throve. Frances Spalding, with her own biographies of Roger Fry, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, and so a bit of an expert on the Bloomsbury Group, puts the date at 1904, when Vanessa and her brothers and sister relocated to Gordon Square in Bloomsbury. But its origins also lie in the Cambridge Apostles of 1899, when the Stephen sisters' brother Thoby and his coterie of Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell and Leonard Woolf met up, and to which Fry, MacCarthy, Forster and Keynes were also subsequently invited. It all gets a bit confusing, but that's not least because they were nearly all interrelated either through family or marriage. It needs a proper family tree.
However, the group is most relevant to me as a lover of Virginia Woolf. To The Lighthouse (1927) is my favourite novel and her diaries are a sensational read. The woman was unique, and drew me in with her siren poetic voice onto the dunes of her imagination, and appalled me in her diaries with her snobbishness while beguiling me with her perceptions. There are examples of both voices in this biopic series of the personalities belonging to the group, and I read in her diaries of her affection for Roger Fry, Maynard Keynes and E.M. Forster, as well as her mixed feelings for Ottoline Morrell.
This overview can be read in an afternoon and is even more enjoyable for having that capability. It is steered by a knowledge of the artistic movements of the time and the lively relations that existed between its core and fringe members, each and every one a fascinating insight into a collection of very formidable minds. It reveals tragedy and hope, fortitude and despair, in love and in intellectual pursuit. But what it reveals most is that these people really lived - in successive marriages, affairs, ménage à trois, hetero- and homosexuals alike - and they used their minds and talents to the fullest as well. It's a fascinating group, as fascinating as the Romantics or the Pre-Raphaelites, both also in this series, the former I enjoyed, the latter I hope to.
An excellent round-up of lives which have enriched our own, mine in particular. Thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.
August 16, 2022
An approachable introduction into the individual and interconnected lives of members of the Bloomsbury Group. Wonderful art accompanies concise, well-written profiles of those in the inner and outer circle. While several of the members are familiar, I hadn't fully appreciated their interconnections and influences on each other, including marriages, affairs, cohabitation and "at homes" regular meetings to discuss ideas without judgement. Citing numerous authored books and biographies, Frances Spalding has made it easy to continue reading and appreciating the intellectual and artistic legacies of the Bloomsbury Group. Highly recommend this book for both its written and artistic content.
April 22, 2023
The way the book is written is entirely suitable for the subject matter. A very nicely produced little book, short, but still with some interesting material and appropriate choice of subjects (always difficult to know exactly who to include in any 'group' definition, but particularly so with Bloomsbury).
October 18, 2025
crec que sóc de les úniques persones que se l'ha llegit de principi a final seguit! es més un llibre per tenir a la tauleta de nit i per mirar els quadres de tant en tant!!! m'ha agradat llegir/mirar un llibre amb tantes pintures boniques ✨
January 19, 2019
Got this as a present, would not have chosen this book myself. It was interesting to read about the biographies, but the purpose of the group still eludes me.
December 6, 2020
Not quite as accessible as the war poets book in the same series, but this is still a nice primer on the Bloomsbury Group and the art that they featured in and created.
March 31, 2022
Very interesting and concise introduction
June 11, 2023
Solid, nicely packaged, and does what it says on the tin. It's a small book with good illustrations and short, concise biographies of the group.
October 6, 2024
Broad strokes of the Bloomsbury lot so you can see who was who - like the pictures .
June 8, 2025
Rating: 4/5
November 23, 2025
I love all things Bloomsbury. This sweet little book hit all the right notes refreshing my memory and adding a thing or two not previously known. Enjoyable, indeed.
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December 23, 2025Rather a decent book, though entirely broad and sweeping, and completely lacking of artistic analysis – not necessarily a pitfall for a biography.
May 12, 2012
I bought this book by mistake. But I liked it. When I say 'by mistake' -- I thought it was a proper book about the group, which would remind me what I once knew, fairly quickly because I'm short of time. However, actually this is really an art publication (National Gallery), not a literary publication so the text is very brief indeed (actually I was quite glad of that) and one's focus is on the full colour paintings and monochrome photographs that take up a great deal of the volume. Some of these paintings are glorious, and so is the quality of the reproduction. So I felt curiously as though I'd watched a short film about the group of characters involved. I really liked it. It wasn't quite what I was looking for but I enjoyed it very much.
July 5, 2022
Elegantly presented giving a short (very short) biography and history of the influential cultural group. An illustrated book so short is, inevitably, cursory in the treatment of its subject.
I have just re-read this National Portrait Gallery edidition which has excellent illustrations and photographs and have cosequently re-rated it to 4*. Whilst cursory in its treatment it acts as an excellent springboard for further reading on the Group and their art.
I have just re-read this National Portrait Gallery edidition which has excellent illustrations and photographs and have cosequently re-rated it to 4*. Whilst cursory in its treatment it acts as an excellent springboard for further reading on the Group and their art.
April 18, 2012
A short introduction to the key characters of the Bloomsbury Group. Using paintings by members of the group and other contemporary artists - Spalding explains very succinctly the structure and relationships of this famous set of friends. I would highly recommend it as the starting point for further research.
January 8, 2014
A short book but a great reminder of the main characters who make up the Bloomsbury Group together with descriptions of a few who existed on the edge. I often walk through Gordon Square and try to imagine the life that went on at number 46. Made me want to visit Charleston and to read The Waves.
September 5, 2014
This is a lovely book to refresh your memory of the lives of the main protagonists in the Bloomsbury Set or alternatively, if it is a world new to you, a lovely place to get introduced to all the characters.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews